Along with funding the creation of a clock that will run for 10,000 years, recovering the rockets from the first moon mission, and trying to shake up the commercial space industry, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos today put his dosh into another tricky, long-term enterprise: a print newspaper.
The $250m cash acquisition for The …

COMMENTS

Debt and pension liability

Instagram, being a private company have little or no debt or pension liability. So the billion that Facebook buys what they think is 1 billion of worth.

Washington Post Media is loaded with long term debt and especially large amount of pension liability. Sure they have lots of real estate properties that Bezo could potentially leverage to pay off, but still, the $250 million doesn't exactly reveal the true cost.

WPM manged to suckered Barry Dillard into buying Newsweek for $1, and Dillard realized much too late that he overpaid due to debt and pension liability. Dillard have sold it to some other sucker.

Re: Debt and pension liability

Bezos isn't getting the real estate - it all remains with the Company Formerly Known As The Washington Post Co. (along with the Kaplan University distance learning and test-prep business, which is quite profitable, and a few other odds and ends including some rural cable systems.) Bezos isn't even getting the Post's office building. He's just getting the newspaper business.

All of the other businesses that are part of the deal are connected in some way with the paper - Robinson Terminal is the Post's newsprint warehouse, and I think Comprint prints the Post's regional papers.

Re: Make the Neocon Post readable again!

Lobby Vehicle

What he's bought is ownership of the lobbying vehicle most popular with Federal government power players. He's basically purchased the opinion making device for all of the greater DC region and the Federal government.

What can you say?

Citizen Kane 2.0

Come, come, Mr. Bezos

Surely you don't expect me to believe that $250M for that kind of access to the Capitol and it's Elites is anything short of a bargain?

He probably didn't want the newspaper. Just the access it gives to "stuff". and $250M is cheap for that. It will have paid (him) for itself in 18 months even if the paper itself can't get turned around.

He bought a voice...

He'll make a fortune

If Amazon stock is any indicator, Bezos can go public in a year and the more money he loses the higher the stock will go. Just look at Amazon's stratospheric stock price and their abysmal earnings. He could sell slightly sour milk at five times the fresh price. He's that good.